did not see how they could ever sail back to Spain against this wind,
whether they reached the Indies or not.

"Pedro," said the Admiral quietly, "what do you think?"

Pedro hesitated only an instant. "My lord," he answered boldly, "if we
cannot go back we must go on--around the world."

"So we can," smiled the Admiral. "But it will not come to that." And
Ruiz, reassured and rather ashamed of his fears, told the other
grumblers if they had seen as much rough weather as he had they would
know when they were well off.

But after a time even the pilots took fright. The compass needle no
longer pointed to the North Star, but half a point or more to the
northwest of it. They had visions of the fleet helplessly drifting
without a guide upon a vast unknown sea. It was not then known that the
action of the magnetic pole upon the needle varies in different parts of
the earth, but the quick mind of the Admiral found an explanation which
quieted their fears. He told them that the real north pole was a fixed
point indeed, but not necessarily the North Star. While this star might
be in line with the pole when seen from the coast of Spain, it would
not, of course, be in the same relative position when seen from a point
hundreds of miles to the west.

On September 15 a meteor fell, which might be another omen--nobody could
say exactly what it meant. Then about three hundred and sixty leagues
from the Canaries the ships began to encounter patches of floating
yellow-green sea-weed, which grew more numerous until the fleet was
sailing in a vast level expanse of green like an ocean meadow. Tuna fish
played in the waters; on one of the patches of floating weed rested a
live crab. A white tropical bird of a kind never known to sleep upon the
sea came flying toward them, alighting for a moment in the rigging. The
owners of the _Pinta_ predicted that they would all be caught in this
ocean morass to starve, or die of thirst, for the light winds were not
strong enough to drive the ships through it as easily as they had sailed
at first. The Admiral, quite undisturbed, suggested that in his
experience land-birds usually meant land not very far away.

Colon always answered frankly the questions put to him, but there was
one secret which he kept to himself from the beginning. Knowing that he
would be likely to have trouble when he reached the seven-hundred-league
limit his crews had set for him, he kept two reckonings. One was for his
privat